Increasing turbulence in Pakistan

When General Pervez Musharraf put aside his presidential hat and invoked his commando beret as the Pakistan army chief on November 3, 2007 to declare an emergency he was acting along predictable lines — but he also created history in a coup-scarred nation. This was the first time that a Pakistani ruler was declaring a national emergency twice.

For Musharraf, the first time was in October 1999, when in a dramatic but bloodless coup he overthrew the then PM Nawaz Sharif. He has now found it necessary to suspend the constitution and bring the country under what is better described as martial law — notwithstanding the fact that civilian PM Shaukat Aziz and other cabinet colleagues are still in office and a new chief justice has been sworn in.

Over the last month, Musharraf has been facing a four-pronged crisis — constitutional and judicial, political, internal security and socio-religious — and his options were shrinking. The invigorated Supreme Court under (now former) Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary was threatening to rule against the General as regards his eligibility to contest the presidential elections while being army chief and the deadline of November 15 when the current National Assembly’s term would expire was fast drawing near. The much anticipated deal under which Musharraf would be elected President for another five-year term by the current assembly even while coopting Benazir Bhutto as a prime minister was going awry and post November 15, in the absence of judicial concurrence, there would have been a void for the General.

The massive reception accorded to Benazir on October 18 in Karachi and the suicide bombing that took the lives of almost 140 people at this rally were cause for panic in the Musharraf camp. Furthermore, similar suicide attacks in Rawalpindi and Sargodha heightened the mood of desperation, and on November 3 the die was cast — the anticipated martial law was swiftly declared since Pakistan was hurtling towards “suicide”, and “inaction” by the General was not an option — more so because Musharraf saw himself as chosen by Allah and destiny to save his country. In his late-night public address, the President highlighted the manner in which religious extremism had challenged the writ of the state and the far from helpful role of the higher judiciary in combating such terrorism.

While it is true that Pakistan was facing multiple crises, the mood in Pakistan is one of anger and dismay and that the martial law was imposed more for Musharraf’s personal gain and to consolidate his own position than to save the nation. This assertion is to be expected but the recipe that Musharraf has chosen to redress the complex turbulence in Pakistan may be a case of too little too late.

Large parts of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border have been taken over by the religious rightwing and the ignominy of Pakistani security personnel being captured in Swat and Waziristan are cases in point. Public executions of military personnel and their being paraded in public by militant clerics — such as Maulana Fazlullah who has captured three towns in Swat — to humiliate the Pak ‘fauj’ may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back to herald the November 3 martial law.

Pakistan faces a grave internal challenge from the religious right as represented by the proliferation of numerous militant groups and this is not new. What is new and perhaps more alarming is the mood of anger and defiance among the lower ranks of the Pak military. An institution that was nurtured as the guardian of Islam is now turning on its own people — and worse still, in public perception — at the behest of the much-hated US President George Bush.

Retired generals like Hamid Gul have publicly criticised Musharraf for his pro-US policies and it is evident they have a large but till now silent support base in the fauj. Thus what is now being eroded is the cohesiveness and credibility of the Pak military — the one institution that was expected to be the last bastion for every crisis that Pakistan has faced till now.

More than US support — which is currently ambivalent about the martial law — Musharraf’s future will be determined by the collective decision of the senior Pak military leadership as represented by the Corps Commanders. Generals before Musharraf have been rendered expendable when the institutional interest of the Pak military was jeopardised.

Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq are cases in point. While it has been stated that elections will be held by January 15, 2008, there are few takers for this proposition. More ominously, leaders like Nawaz Sharif and Iftikhar Chaudhary are calling for a mass protest. If such emotive exhortation embolden the elusive militant groups scattered across the subcontinent — from Afghanistan to Bangladesh — to take recourse to violence and mayhem, regional stability will be severely endangered. General Musharraf is now astride a dangerous tiger that may yet devour him.